


Linden Blue

by Lilysmum



Category: The Killing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 00:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6352072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilysmum/pseuds/Lilysmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 2, Episodes 8/9.  Linden visits Holder at the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Linden Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oppressa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppressa/gifts).



He doesn’t remember much about the beating.

The shot to the knee was bad but the first good one to the head pretty much numbed things down for the rest of him. What he remembers mostly is how _he_ felt, as opposed to how _it_ felt.

Twisting on the muddy ground while they played piñata with him, he felt the blows raining down but the pain was strangely muted. His brain was more focussed on how fucking scared he was, worse than he’d ever been; scared that this was it: he wasn’t going to make it out of this one. For all the shit he’d been through in his life, for all the shit he’d put other people through, he didn’t want it to end like this, for nothing to have come from his time spent on earth but a shitload of trouble. The only thing he found to hold onto was the hope that since they were all so busy kicking the snot out of him then maybe Linden had gotten off the island okay.

 

The night spent under the stars wasn’t so bad. The pain was dull but he was suffering from some kind of inertia. He kept telling himself that he was going to get up and untie his wrist from the tree and start walking. He could imagine himself doing it, he could almost _feel_ himself doing it, but his pounding head and his battered limbs were just too heavy.  Seductive waves of blackness rolled over him like the sea, pulling him down in an undertow. He knew he should probably resist them but some strange sort of apathy had sapped his strength and rendered him powerless.

The only real clear sensation he had was the hurt of thinking about Linden. The last thing he remembers he was sobbing and shaking and fairly damn sure he would never see her again. It was only when he heard the dogs that he knew he was still alive. He thought he heard her voice too, for a second, in with all the others, but maybe it was just a dream.

 

It was all noise and bright lights at the hospital and he was freezing again. He snagged the matchbook out of his pocket as they were cutting his clothes off of him and then his sister was there, crying at first, and then giving him shit. As per usual.

He forced his eyes open and cringed at Liz’s shocked expression, holding the matchbook out to her between two fingers of his filthy, bloodied hand. He knew she’d help him.

“Give this to Linden,” he heard himself say before he gave up, or gave in, or whatever, to the pain which was like a mountain on top of him now, and that’s all he knew until he woke up hours later on a hospital bed that felt like a slab of concrete with the sounds of beeping and dripping and god knows what all else equipment he was attached to humming in his ears.

They shined lights in his eyes, asked if he knew where he was, asked him if he knew what had happened. Yeah, he said, and yeah. And did he want something for the pain and hells yeah, a couple of percs would be great, thanks. It was a shot they gave him though, rolling him halfway over, and fuck did he love the prick of that needle, he hadn’t forgotten it, sweet as a drop of honey on his starving skin.

But then Linden. Linden.

As he tripped in and out of sleep she kept coming back to him; if she was real or a dream he couldn’t tell. He thought he heard her calling his name, panic in her voice. He thought he saw her eyes flashing ice blue fury, not at him but at someone else. But there was a rude toss of her ponytail, the slamming of a car door; that was for him, he knew. And he was just as fucking pissed off too, at her. How is it that he could go from being so infuriated by her to spending his last and possibly dying thoughts hoping that they hadn’t gotten her too, praying that she was okay.

And then she is standing right there, for real.

“Hey,” she greets him softy, approaching his bedside slowly, carefully.

He means to ask her if the matchbook panned out, but what comes out of his dry mouth is actually “I thought I’d never see you again,” with the words all mashed together and his voice all reedy and choked. As soon as he’s able to focus on her he has to squeeze his eyes shut against tears. Narcotics, he decides, turn him into a suck. Or maybe evil red beatings do.

Or maybe it’s just Linden.

She comes up close and her eyes search his face.

“Yeah,” she finally says, a whisper, “me too.”

She holds the straw so he can drink and then she motions as if to touch his face but then changes her mind and goes to the head of his bed. He turns to watch her as she grabs the curtain and pulls it all the way around the bed, stirring up the air around them, separating them from everything else in the world. When she’s done she returns to his side and his eyes are glued to her face as he sees her scope out the situation, checking out the mess of him, he figures.

“Looks worse than it is,” he tells her, his voice is better now, and she nods with raised eyebrows as if she doesn’t believe him for a second. With her hand she smooths out the sheets to the side of him on the bed. Then she’s bending down and he can’t see but it seems like she is taking off her boots. Jesus, what is she doing?

He hadn’t thought that there would be room enough but there is.  

She somehow fits herself up on the bed beside him, without him having to move at all, and rests her head right beside his with her chin leaning gently against his shoulder. He imagines he can actually see his heart start to thud in his chest as he watches her hand make its way across his taped torso, over his battered bicep and onto his relatively unmarred shoulder. Her fingertips brush gently across his cheek, his forehead, the bridge of his nose and then linger against his lips. Her body is warm and solid against him. Somehow he has gotten his arm underneath her enough to wrap around her and pull her in closer, and she responds with a tiny sound, a half-whine, half-whimper of approval and a little arch of her spine against his hand. Oh holy fuck.

All he has is the sheet and the hospital gown, no boxers or drawers of any type so, yeah.  She sees immediately, of course, and while he feels his face flush and he mutters “Ignore that,” she pulls the sheet up to cover both of them and settles in even closer, carefully pressing her lips up close to his good ear.

“You sure?” she breathes and when he turns enough to look at her he can see her face is a tiny bit pink across the cheekbones and it occurs to him not for the first time that her mouth is a freaking masterpiece.

“No,” he says slowly, because he’s no idiot, and then he half-laughs which hurts but also feels very damned good. His tongue makes a swipe across his lips and he would only have to move an inch to kiss her but she shakes her head just enough to stop him which makes her nose brush against his and he laughs again because can this even be real?

“Can you be really really quiet?” she asks, those lips against his ear again and nodding yes, yes, yes makes him dizzy.

Her hands are small and cool and careful. She’s gentle and it’s going to take ages but that’s okay. He stays silent and he looks into her eyes, into that bottomless blue that somehow manages to be both deep and pale at the same time.

It’s almost unbelievable, he decides, the colour of Linden’s eyes; he’s never seen that exact shade before. It deserves to have its own name, the starring role on the spectrum, a Wikipedia page, all of that.  It’s the only colour in the room, the only colour anywhere. Linden Blue, he decides to call it, and it’s the purest thing, the strongest thing that he has ever seen. It’s indescribable, and infinite, like the sky, or the ocean, only better.

In the end she gives in and does let him kiss her a little on those lips, pale salmon and slightly chapped, with that perfect little notch at the top. For some reason he’d always imagined her tongue would be rough like a cat’s but turns out it isn’t, its smooth and cool like fresh water.  He can taste her nicotine gum and smell her hair and her sweater and just herself underlying it all. Her face is flushed and she is breathing with him too but she tells him she doesn’t want anything when he moves to touch her. He knows he could not do much right now but damn he wants to get his mouth on her. He tells her so in a bare whisper but Linden stands firm.

“Not today,” she breathes right in his ear, gracing him with a perfect smile that he can hear but not see. He feels totally fucking stoned as he holds her around the waist and looks alternately at her and at the ceiling. Eventually he cannot keep his eyes open any longer and the scene behind his eyelids is blue, all blue, Linden Blue.

When he finally comes he doesn’t make a sound.  She is the one who moans.

 

It feels like eons later as they speed across the expressway from the airport. They have barely spoken a word since Jack’s plane took off. Linden’s done well, he thinks, considering. She’s focussed of course on getting their files back and on that goddamned casino that they’re going to have to go back to sooner rather than later if they want to solve this fucking case. It’s okay. It’s how she rolls, and she’s rolling pretty well for what’s just gone down, he knows.

He’s not so sure about himself though. He’s a mess. He’s definitely having trouble with the fantasy/reality separation process. He’s got a relentless headache and he’s dizzy as fuck, as well as suffering from an unnerving general weirdness of both body and mind.

He wants to know if it really happened, the business at the hospital. It’s hard to believe that it was real, while at the same time, it felt real, and the memory of it is far too vivid for it not to have happened.

He’d woken up with the curtain still pulled around his bed. There was no evidence of anything, except for the total awesomeness of it all that had seeped right through his whole body. The knowledge of it surrounded him like a cloud of cotton candy and he was pretty sure he could still see the indentation her body had left in the sheets beside him.  They offered him another syringe full of heaven but he turned it down. He didn’t need it. Besides, his nephew was there by then and it was just minutes after that when Jack called, filling him in to what was happening and he knew he had to get to her.

They’re almost at his place when he decides to just ask her.

“You saw me today at the hospital, right?”

“Eventually,” she tells him quickly, “I tried when I came and got the matchbook. Your sister wouldn’t let me in though.”

“No I mean later,” He explains, “Did you come and see me in my room when…when I was flyin’ on morphine or whatever the fuck that was?”

It’s a long minute before she answers him. They have pulled up in front of his place.

“Do you remember that?” she turns in her seat to face him, and her voice is as tender and gentle as her hands had been, earlier, “You were pretty out of it.”

“Yeah?” he asks, because this is not telling him much, “I thought maybe it was a dream.”

“I was there.” Linden replies, her eyes searching his now and it’s all he can do not to reach out for her.

“You told me there was a new colour,” she adds, and smiles as she reaches out to take his hand for a second, then pauses, as if she is waiting to see if he can fill in the blanks. She holds his hand gently in one of hers and when she uses her opposite hand’s fingers to trace his knuckles he starts to feel like he is hypnotized. Her eyes moving over his face feel like a physical touch.

“Linden Blue, you told me it was called.” She tells him finally, and he can barely hear her as his eyes start to close involuntarily and he is sure she is about to reach up and touch him.  

Then she shakes her head the tiniest bit, and she lets go of his hand and switches gears.

She is apologizing for what happened yesterday after they argued. She’s thanking him for being there for Jack. He shakes his head, tells her it’s nothing, tells her she’s still his BFF.  As if there was ever any doubt.

But she shuts him down then; she’s not going to stay at his place, she’s not going to tell him anything more.  And then she is laughing and she’s kicking him out of her car. Apparently this is still going to be their thing.  

Okay, he decides, you want to play it that way, that’s cool. Maybe it was a dream.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Linden Blue.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, thanks for the inspiration, my lovely friend!


End file.
